Friday, 5 September 2014

God is too good looking

It is funny how our conception of God
and everything relating to him can stretch no further than what is familiar to
us. Let me explain. If you think about God, what comes to mind? I guess
everything that is written in the Bible about him, right? And more? Yes more. This is where we take a leap
of anthropocentric faith, that is, we imagine him to be one of us. This is of
course biblical since we are created in his image and no God of ours is going
to be and look any different. Yet we will not stop there. We sometimes go on
overdrive. We start to imagine God and fantasize about him in ways that some
may even squirm in their seat. Here is what I mean.

When we think about God, we always
think of him as not just good looking but great looking. Going further, we may
even take Hollywood stars like George Clooney and Brad Pitt as the minimum benchmark. God knows that we have already asked Jim Caveziel to play Jesus on
screen and he was a hit. Undeniably, Jim is one actor who has a bankable face,
hands down (of course this comparison is clearly debatable and that's my point
exactly).

Recently, Discovery Channel used the
latest forensic technology and reconstructed what Jesus would look like and it
caused a public outcry. One columnist even commented that the Jesus she knew as
a child was replaced by "the kind of
guy who wouldn't make it through airport security." (Kathleen Parker).

From things as superficial as looks,
we go to other humanly perceived features like....hair? Here is where it goes a
tad irreverent with apology of course. Now can anyone imagine the Creator of
the Universe being bald? Or having a mop of white fizzy hair? How about an
Afro-American perm? Re-bonding anyone?
God forbid that one should consider dreadlocks or spikey pump rock or those
out-of-this-world hairdo that leaves one side with hair hanging and the other
side as barren as a baby's butt (no offence to cultural distinctions here).

As far as some besotted believers are
concerned, should they be compelled to describe the divine coiffure, the
general unspoken consensus would be flowing golden locks with a regal fringe
parted at the side (I trust there will be many who will have other creative
ideas in mind). Now, the anthropocentric overdose will secretly crave
for piercing blue eyes, sharp Roman nose, avuncular grandness, perfect
eyesight and a symmetrical face. That is how we generally think about God (superficially) because perfection in everything will not tolerate imperfection in anything. He
is God anyway, right?

For a more sobering, and no less
biting, view of the son of God, here is what Bishop Yvonne Flaunden has to
say: "(I see Jesus) walking around as a horribly oppressed person with a
whole lot of clothes on, pressing him - just layers and layers. We've taken
2000 years to turn Jesus into someone very different than that person who got
in the water with John for baptism. There's political stuff, there's economic
stuff, there's church stuff. Jesus is even a plank on many political platforms.
Jesus is the reason that we go to war, Jesus is the reason we oppress the
immigrant, Jesus is even mad at Mickey Mouse or the Teletubies. But there comes
a point when we have to undress Jesus, we have to take all the stuff, all the
chap that we've put on Jesus, all of these layers and layers of tradition and
all of our different ideas and theologies and get back to the Jesus that stood
in the water with John." Wow, like peeling off layers after layers of the
theological onion of presuppositions hor?

How about the place where God dwells? Believers call it heaven. Now to be fair, heaven, as contrast
with hell, has to be of the highest class, prestige and comfort. It has to be
perfect too. This is where we go all out to put heaven on par with our
humanistic thinking (of course there is undeniably some biblical basis to it
too). Heaven will share some similarities with mother earth, but only
exceptionally perfect. This would mean that (for the lack of examples) in terms
of cleanliness, it has to be like Singapore with neat alignment of trees
everywhere, save for its less than perfect government and policies (now I am
sure some Icelanders or Swedes will readily beg to differ). Imagine heaven as
totally clean, dust and dirt free, but ruled by a benevolent, wise and perfect
being...like God (or God, dispensing with "like")

How about the problems we humans
generally encounter on earth like crimes, pollution, war and violence,
corruption, death, pain and suffering, birth deformities and poverty,
exploitation and inequality, depression, and illnesses and diseases? Does
anyone think that the heaven defined according to our standards will be
burdened or plagued by all that negative, dreary and ominous elements? Of
course not. It is a street paved in gold for God's sake, with mansion bigger
than a billionaire's estate, without death and tears, and with a whole lot of celebrating,
praising and rejoicing forever and ever more (and I guess worshippers are
miraculously blessed with the perfect pitch, which happens to be welcoming news
for some churchgoers I know. And not to forget, we all look thirty- something,
no exception. Ladies, you can throw those SKII bottles out of the window).

Next come angels. Now
needlessly to say, angels are good looking too (although in the Bible, some of
them are described to have more than one head and a mutant-like body). By the
way, have you seen an ugly angel in the movies? We can't imagine angels having
one eye like a Cyclops or four arms like that alien from ben ten right?
And I guess they are musical as well with the fabled harp. They are possibly
great archer too...or should I be confining my description to cupids only?
Anyway, angels cannot do without them wings and some have more than one pair to
cover their entire body. Angels also communicate in perfect English (some with
a dreamy Scottish accent) in mellifluous tones and a smile to boot. In every
way, angels are like us except that they are on average better looking (unless
you are comparing them with the hunks in Hollywood) and yes, they fly too.

Finally, we come to hell. Now
I guess this place is not much different from our earthly prisons except with
much more dread, pain, torture and...not to forget eternity. It kind of reminds
one of Abu Ghraib but with hideous looking guards staring at you 24-7 and lots
of pits of fire to rotisserie ungenerated unbelievers and impenitent
hypocrites...forever.

If there is one place that takes a
page off our anthropocentric nature, it has to be hell. As much as we want to
go to heaven, a wonderful place of endless joy, we want to avoid hell at all
costs, which is a place of punishment for evil people who reject God. This is a
very human thing to do since the Manichean struggle between good and evil,
heaven and hell, God and the devil, and the eventual victory of good over evil
are the formulaic meta-narrative we tell our children and
ourselves over and over again.

Let me end on a dark note. Let's talk about the devil. To the
believer, he is as real as the person standing next to him in a crowded train.
This is self-evident because without him, the original sin is doomed. I can't
imagine the serpent in Genesis being rewritten as any lesser evil as the devil
we have over the millennia come to know and fear.

Imagine a shady Al Pacino-esque
character taking the place of the proverbial serpent in Genesis, will Eve ever
take the bait or the bite it? I highly doubt it. In other words, in an ironic
twist, I guess no one (or entity) could ever do the so-called "apple-bait" better than him. No doubt he
met his match when he confronted the son of man in the New Testament, he
nevertheless got away with the mother of man in Genesis. Alas, the world would
be a lot different if the son and the mother had switched places. Just a
thought.

So, what is our human view of the
evil one, Lucifer, Beelzebub, the first resident and Lord of hades? Well, I
think the preceding paragraph speaks for itself. He is of course evil. He is
heartless. He is merciless. He is all the despicable traits you can find in the
villains portrayed in all our books, magazines, movies, articles, journals, pictorials, paintings and encyclopedias. In fact, it makes it a whole
lot easier to think of him as the direct, glaring and deeply disturbing
opposite of God.

Herein ends our thinking about God
and I thank you for taking the time with me on this journey of mental
experiment (or imagination?). And it would be good to be reminded that
although God is not a figment of our imagination, we were once a figment of
his. So, if the apple does not fall far from the tree, I can expect our
thoughts about him to have a semblance of truth and reality in it with the
expected anthropocentric caricatures at its periphery. Cheerz.